Mnandi Me

Zola Nom­bona never planned on be­ing an ac­tress, but it’s work­ing out well for her. The 24-year-old Wits grad­u­ate is a fa­mil­iar face, with star­ring roles on sit­com Forced Love (2014-cur­rent) as Kat in sea­son 2 (2015) and tor­tured bride Rox­anne on drama show Z’bondiwe (2015-cur­rent). Now she’s try­ing her hand at pre­sent­ing, on life­style and health show Mnandi Me (2016-cur­rent), which fo­cuses on the lat­est health trends, nutri­tion and fit­ness.

What made you want to try pre­sent­ing? When the op­por­tu­nity pre­sented it­self, I was ready. I’m an ac­tress and tele­vi­sion is what I do. It’s a new chal­lenge. So how’s it been so far? When I act, I am em­body­ing some­one else. With pre­sent­ing, it’s you and your per­son­al­ity. It’s chal­leng­ing me won­der­fully so far. And what spoke to you about this show? I wasn’t happy with how I looked and the show caught me off-guard be­cause I re­alised that as the face, I have to lead a cer­tain life­style. It’s noth­ing new though, be­cause I’m a fit­ness fa­natic at heart. Now I work out at least three times a week with a per­sonal trainer. How do you pick your guests? We cover a range of top­ics, from di­a­betes to laugh­ter ther­apy, skin, hair and nail and even breast can­cer, so it de­pends on who’s the best per­son to speak to in that field. Usu­ally it’s an ex­pert or some­one who’s been through a cer­tain con­di­tion and re­lays their per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. What makes Mnandi Me dif­fer­ent from other day­time talk­shows? It’s fun and young. The en­ergy I bring is light-hearted and I ask the “stupid ques­tions” so view­ers can learn a lot more from the guests. Do you plan on do­ing more host­ing gigs? Yes, but I’d like to fo­cus on mu­sic as well – when the time is right. I’m a vo­cal­ist who loves mu­sic and per­form­ing.